Volume 7 Number 11 Moon of the Half Summer - Half Autumn October 1, 1977
Coalition Supports Indian Treaties
Reprinted from Yakima Nation Review
SEATTLE: Its name is the National Coalition to Support Indian Treaties (NCSIT) and its purpose is to do just that.
Formed this July in Seattle, NCSIT came into being as a new counterforce to the significant national political backlash against Indian tribes across the U.S.
NCSIT will, in a kind of stellar balance, provide among non-Indians a push-for-push opposition to the nearly two year old Interstate Congress for Equal Rights and Responsibilities (ICERR).
NCSIT in October will disclose its coalition members, consisting of numerous pre-existing national organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, National Council of Churches and a bounty
of other concerned organizations.
The coalition also plans to have Mason personnel in all states where the backlash is mushrooming, where it will " Conduct a program of public education regarding Indian rights."
NCSIT is growing from the Pacific Northwest, where there is the highest number of separate special interest backlash organizations of various sorts in one state.
The coalition will also support tribes and organizations in their efforts to protect treaty and tribal rights, as well as cooperating with all such groups in the public education efforts.
The Seattle area residents who formed NCSIT, moreover, are not newcomers to Indian - non-Indian conflicts. Many are former members of the now-defunct Citi-
zens for Indian Rights (CFIR), a non-Indian support group in the Puget Sound area, which from 1970 till 1974 was active in the area of public education in western Washington while the federal court suit, U.S. vs Washington, was heading toward its conclusion.
Dr. Richard Briggs of Seattle, a practicing physician, formed CFIR, and now he's in the forfront as executive director of NCSIT.
The National Congress of American Indians, National Tribal Chairmen's Assoc., and the informal National Indian Alliance have all welcomed NCSIT's birth. The faces of NCSIT people will doubtless become quite familiar around Indian Country, and their names will be remembered more fondly than those of the principals of ICERR.
NEW CONGRESSIONAL BILL TERMINATES TRIBES
Reprinted from Yakima Nation Review
The " Native Americans Equal Opportunity Act", introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives Sept. 12, by Rep. John Cunningham, D-Wash., provides for the abrogation of all treaties between Indian tribes and the U.S. government and the abolition of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Cunningham, 47, is the junior congressman from his home state of Washington. He was elected this past May 17, to replace Brock Adams, whom President Jimmy Carter had named Secretary of Transportation in the Carter administration.
The Cunningham treaty abrogation act requires the President to establish procedures for the liquidation of the trust responsibility and dismantling of the BIA, and requires the President to publish a " proclamation" when all tribal termination is completed.
Targets for termination, in the Cunningham bill, are all current federally recognized tribes, all currently terminated tribes, and tribes whose reservations were established by means other than treaties.
The bill provides for transfer of all holdings of tribal land assests to tribes themselves directly for allotment to adult members and liquidation of common trust title.
Included as targets in this bill are " any Indian tribe, band, nation or other organized group or community, including any Alaska Native Village or regional or village corporation
All hunting and fishing rights of the tribes will also be dissolved, with Indians becoming subject to all federal, state and local laws governing hunting and fishing, as well as all other jurisdictional areas in common with non-Indian citizens.
Stimulus for the Cunningham bill was the so-called "Fish War" in his home 7th
District, an urban and suburban area in the south section of Seattle, Wash., including Auburn, Kent, Renton, South Bellevue, Mercer Island and south Seattle, where many non-Indian fishermen have raised Indian fishing rights guarantees to a number one controversy.
Cunningham in announcing introduction of the bill, Sept. 12, in Washington D.C., said he was " achieving two goals that I talked about during my campaign ". He said those two goals were to " resolve the controversy surrounding the Boldt decision " regarding fishing on Feb. 12, 1974, " by providing to all citizens an equal opportunity to fish and hunt without discrimination of ethnic background.
His second goal, he said, was " to end the paternal and protective role currently being played by the Bureau of Indian Affairs " which holds Indian back from
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